Older stuff

Pentarus

Category: HARP SF

It has been a while since I had an ongoing project – excluding the never-completed update of Cartol’s Emporium, that’s not happening by the way. There is no reasons to anymore. So many books have been published, I’m not sure if any of the ships I put in the catalogue remains unstated by FFG. Same thing with a lot of the gear. I may, perhaps, one day, remake it into a shorter supplement consisting mainly of the optional house-rules and ideas for how to improve/change the game to fit certain styles of play.

But before I get into that, I’ll move back to HARP, more specifically HARP SF. I’m not done with Star Wars, I don’t think I’ll ever be, but I need a different storyverse and rule system for a while. Somewhere I can tell my own, different stories. Stories not bound by the tropes of Star Wars.

So, I’m making my own storyverse.

Currently the setting is loosely based on the HARP SF setting Tintamar, but that is merely a framework that serves as a starting point – you could arguably also call Expanse, Alien, Prometheus, 2001 a space odyssey, Oblivion and Arrival starting points each and every one of them. The ambition is to move beyond that, and make something of my own. Something that is not Tintamar (or any of the other influences I mentioned), but still be used with HARP SF without too much tweaking or adjustments of what can be found in the two existing books for that game.

Currently Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) is rather restrictive, as I understand it, when it comes to publishing stuff using their systems. So here’s to them adopting an attitude more along the lines of MonteCook Games and other companies.

I may end up having to use the Cypher system if ICE doesn’t change their stance by the time I have a manuscript done.

Our campaign ended a little while back. In short, it got complicated, there were some betrayals, but it ended good. With everyone dead. Real heroic like. Star Wars Rogue One-style – except no Death Star, but thousands of metric tons of stones and falling rocks.

Instead of having a break, or starting up another Star Wars game straight away, we decided to try some of my other games. We settled on HARP SF. A game I was part of testing many years ago, but never really ran a proper campaign in. It is highly recommended if you want something a bit more gritty, deadly and “sciency” than games like Numenera, Star Wars and the like. It’s got a high level of detail, many skills, high potential mortality rate – yet it is no Rolemaster or Spacemaster.3

My game is set in a version of the included setting: Tintamar. Tweaks include: no FTL or alien species, the gravitic drives are not as unaffected by the orbits of the planets and the sun’s gravity as in the presented setting. And of course, history, dates and years have been shuffled around, events and other stuff not fleshed out a lot has been fleshed out, differently.

I call my version Sepsis. It’s a corrupt version of Tintamar, it’s a world where everything is controlled by mega corporations and dictatorship-like governments. The recent establishment of the Terran Federation could be seen as a kin of the Alliance in Firefly. It’s Earth-centric, but supports Mars and Venus. These inner planets are strong, if reluctant and suspicious allies. The Federation also includes the Belter League and the Jovian Confederacy, who supports and receive support from a few colonies in the Saturnian system.

The solar system is suffering under the weight of the power struggles between the political factions, new and old militaristic faction, and a growing market for illicit goods and services that the various political factions are powerless to control and the various militaries and police forces struggle to pin down, define and root out.

The years is 2282, Eris is almost 30 years past its perihelion and a brave new outpost has been established there. The Syndicate is increasing activities outside the belt, and the Terran Federation has produced its first new battleships. Some independent operatives on their way home from Eris must decelerate to investigate some irregular signals (maybe a mayday?) deep in the Saturnian system.